Buying a new laptop. DELL or HP?

I don't know much about computers. Buying a new laptop. I have 2 friends who know computers. One says he will help me select a DELL. Where you specifically pick all that you want, and DELL builds it for you. He claims "off the shelf" comps have alot of things I do not need priced into them, and that building your own DELL is the way to go.

My other friend says HP is of MUCH better quallity. He would recommend an off the shelf prebuilt HP over a DELL anyday of the week. Hes says its like a BMW vs a Chevy Cobalt...

My use would only really be the internet, downloading music and basic Microsoft office like word and excel (but not even for detailed work purposes, just simple home applications). Nothing fancy. Price range is around $600-$700. Any recomendations would be appreciated!

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Anonymous

1 decade ago

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DELL has by far better quality and support for their laptops. Though I personally recommend ASUS and Toshiba laptops.

I would have to go with neither, in my personal experience owning 3 HP computers (two laptops, one desktop), one laptop has been in for service twice, once for a complete motherboard replacement (due to a bad NVIDIA graphics card design) and the other time for new fans to help an overheating problem they tried to bandaid in a BIOS update. Then my one HP desktop off the bat failed in the first two weeks because of a bad hard drive, got a brand new machine and now at less than 2 years old, the thing has started completely locking up and is pretty much unusable. The other HP laptop, the most powerful computer out of the three is the only one that hasn't experienced any major problems although the hard drive to this day still clicks because HP has so far not released the firmware update necessary to resolve the problem to it's customers.

Dell isn't much better, throughout going to several schools I've seen Dell's fail, time and time again and recently I seen a friend order a brand new spanking Dell only to have a graphics card that fails the minute you load YouTube HD and then wait 3 weeks for a new computer.

My personal recommendation has to be ASUS or Sony, both make great computers at good prices (although ASUS is better value for the money) and anyone I know who has owned a computer from either brand loves them (either one will be my next computer brand in a laptop).

I'm a fan of both HP and Dell, but honestly - I kind of like Dell best. I've had both my Dell laptop and my desktop for about 4 years now with no problems... but then maybe I've just been really lucky.

you know ,i have 7 pc and laptops each one install and ran various programs on them one pc hp/compaq gave most of the problems,bsods,errors ,program install problems,i just replace the motherboard and cpu combo with close what was in there,well it works pretty good,the dell laptop

only one bsod over the three years of having it,user error, besides that the dell runs great,now the hp

that was messing up was a 2005 model,the newer model seems to run good{tested hp-dv6},support from both is good{apple is the best},off the shelf vs build your own dell for your price range off the shelf,you"ll pay more for the build your own,if you pick a dell make sure it has the appls you need,now microsoft office takes a lot space with a hdd over 250 gb at least 500gb,windows 7 64 bit,4gb of ram a 2.0ghz dual core intel processor,if possible a 512mb video card,i would wait until they go on sale ,and make sure you get a good warranty, three dells,2 hp/compaq/1 gateway with a msi motherboard upgrade,still the dells out perform the others and older than the others

Source(s): get a dell!

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Anonymous

1 decade ago

Your best bet would be an off the shelf Toshiba or ASUS.

Dell laptops have overheating issues which will not give them as long a life.

HP's are known to have many problems. BMW v Chevy Cobalt isn't accurate at all it's more like a Ford Taurus Vs. a Mercury Sable.

Right now the Two Top brands for reliability are Toshiba or ASUS. Below is a link to a recent study on laptops.

I recommend HP because DELL laptops generate more heat. I've been using two latest DELL laptops out of which one is burining like a hot pan and the other moderately hot. I've also used HP models a last yr and they had no major issue with heat. Build quality Dell is good. HP has recently come up with good build quality for costlier models. Performance DELL and HP are same because user selects the configuration.

I recommend you buy a laptop according to specs, rather than brand. Judging from the activities you described, you will not need a laptop with dedicated graphics or a super powerful processor. A laptop such as the Dell Studio 15 would be a great fit. It has 4 GB of RAM, plenty of storage space, and a nice-sized 15.6" screen. It is also portable at 5.5 lbs.

I do tech support for a bank (probly shouldnt say which one, but its in the top 5 in the country), and we used to be exclusively Dell for all new laptops/desktops, but this year started buying HP because of all of the Dell issues.